A pregnant elephant wandered into a village in search of food, where she reportedly ate a pineapple that had been filled with firecrackers. The boobytrapped fruit exploded in her mouth, burning and gashing her jaw and tongue.
Desperately, she fled the village, searching for somewhere to nurse her injuries. Likely attempting to keep her fresh wounds from getting infected, the soon-to-be-mother stood in the Velliyar River in Kerala, India for several days with her trunk and face submerged under water. There she suffered in agonizing pain until she died.
"She trusted everyone," Mohan Krishnan, a devastated wildlife officier, wrote on Facebook. "When the pineapple she ate exploded, she must have been shocked not thinking of herself, but about the child she was going to give birth to in 18 to 20 months. She didn't harm a single human being even when she ran in searing pain in the streets of the village. She didn't crush a single home."
Indian conservationists and animal lovers worldwide have been outraged and deeply upset by the use of the explosive, many believing that the mammal was targeted because elephants raid crops intended for humans.
Please bring whoever perpetrated this act of extreme cruelty to justice.
